i got sunshi-yine

Posted on annePosted in food and garden, projects

beckie came over last night to knit and when we took a walk through the garden, look what we found—first squash flowers of the year, yay! and not just that, we also found

squash.
mmm. i just put squash on the grocery list, too . . . maybe by saturday i’ll have to take it off (fingers crossed). i have to admit, this squash is a bit of a cheat—normally i grow all the squash from seeds, but when we went to the nursery, i saw they had really healthy-looking plants, four for $1.50 or something like that, so i bought them. we’ve got the zucchini above, and some ronde de nice (i think that’s what this is)

and further down the row is some yellow summer squash (top photo that opened the post). i also put in a few hills of winter squash from seed, which sprouted right away even though david informed me i’d planted in a spot he hadn’t tilled. hey, if the soil was diggable, i planted in it, heh

and no harm done. i had a packet of mixed winter squash seeds which i sorted into piles of what looked like similar types, and planted them together. i’m hoping i’ll end up with three hills of different squashes—time will tell.
i’m no fool—everything looks really great for the squash right now, but i’m spraying for bugs on saturday, whether they need it or not.

i noticed that some of the eggplant might need it too (their leaves always get kinda flea-bitten, though it doesn’t kill them). look how big they’re getting . . .

and our strawberries have attained the blush of early ripening

just lovely. even if we never get to eat them, they are beautiful to photograph.

the spinach is getting its second set of leaves, so it doesn’t look like weeds anymore

(see lisa, it will happen this way for yours, too! ps: i love how you have your salad garden set up.)

and the last pretty, green thing i have is lettuce—all the rain and coolness this week really jump-started its growth; soon we’ll have a box filled with salad.

i’m so excited about the new garden space that i’m already planning next year—michele and i decided today that i should plant garlic come october. remind me of that at rhinebeck . . .

i mentioned while knitting hillflowers that valerie and karen at mountain meadow wool had requested a couple of knitted items to show in their booth at TNNA. i didn’t have time to design two new items but i thought that the morning glory wrap would be a great piece to show off the beauty and texture of their fingering yarn.

karolyn knit up this beautiful sample in no time and it arrived the other day—isn’t she amazing? it’s just breathtaking in cream—i love it karolyn; thank you from the bottom of my heart.

it’s really nice to see this made up in something different—it makes me want to go back and do several shawls again in alternate yarns (heh. maybe when i’m old, eh?)

like i said, beckie came over last night to knit—she’s starting her first sweater so she came over to work out the size and gauge together. really, it was also a good excuse to drink coffee and talk, but we did make changes to her original plan and work out the size according to her actual gauge swatch—well worth a couple of hours work.

i knit on my roger sock while she did swatches. i don’t have pictures (next time i see her, i promise) but she’s using briar rose fourth of july which she received in a fiber trade with chris. it’s a tonal mix of denim blues that’s just perfect for this cardigan. i’ve always loved that sweater; i know i should make one with some of my handspun but do i really need another sweater project right now?? (say yes, say yes!)

after beckie left, i worked out my new sock design for the signature kit i talked about some time last week.

this won’t be a colorwork sock—they’d like one design worked up in two colorways. i’m going with a sailboat motif that i think works really well in this yarn—the blue one looks like boats on a sunny racing day, the brown one looks like boats in the moonlight.

and i tried my new signature needles—both sets, actually. well, they ARE all that, lemme tell you. i love the points, i love the metal, i love that the 0s are heavier steel and the 1s are lighter aluminum. theya re the DPNs of my dreams, truly.

i LOVE the gray color of the one set; if i ever decide to get a bigger arsenal of them, i’d go with that color all around. but my green ones are special too; they are a gift from my friend and so they shall stand out—i’ll think of her every time i see that green.

i didn’t keep my swatch to show you—sorry, but my experience with lorna’s laces yarn is that i’ll need every bit of each skein to knit a 72-stitch sock. i do have the start of the new sock to show

and you can see i’m working toe-up for a change. not like me in the least, but i’m all about doing what it takes to serve the pattern and this motif needs to be knit bottom-up.

no sad faces—have some more strawberries.

and a few more morning glories. and tomorrow . . . fernfrost.

24 thoughts on “i got sunshi-yine”

  1. Oh wow! That morning glory wrap really stands out in that solid! For a minute I thought it WAS a whole new design!!! Now I want it…

  3. Yes! My spinach started getting it’s second leaves this week, too, so it’s looking much more spinachy now. LOL I’ve also got to get out there and spray because the flea beetles are having a field day with a lot of my veggies. The nerve!

  4. By the way, your strawberries are so cute! Are they hard to grow? My son mentioned wanting to try growing some, but I remember having them when I was growing up and don’t remember them doing well.

  6. Oh my goodness, again, yet! Your garden is just wonderful….even more…I love the shawl….here we go, shaking my piggy bank…LOL Have a great day 🙂

  9. Morning Glory is absolutely stunning in that yarn! There’s something so pure and feminine about it.

    p.s.-love the strawberry pictures! They got a “first thing in the morning” smile out of me!

  10. MMMmmm – the garden pics are making my mouth water. I cheated this year and did the best thing I could – I joined a local farm’s CSA. So I’ll be getting all sorts of fresh produce without doing the work. I know it’s cheating, but it’s a small step in the right direction.

    I’m glad to hear your review of the signature needles. I have a pair of straight signature needles and I love them, but I haven’t purchased the dpns (yet).

    Love the Morning Glory. It truly is glorious.

  11. Love the wrap.

    I treated myself to a set of the Signature needles at the Maryland Sheep & Wool show in 2008…a pair of shorter staights. And I gotta say…I think they were sort of a waste of money. They’re okay. Now, perhaps with a different length, a different tip, a different end cap I would have fallen in love with them. But they are too expensive to get variable sets. Oh well…they were worth a shot and now I know.

    Love the clushing strawberries. We planted strawberries one year and got, if I remember correctly, two strawberries from our row of plants.

    Gee, this comment is sort of a downer, isn’t it? Let me cheer it up a little….

    Have a wonderful weekend!

  13. I love the Morning Glory in an alternate yarn! Beautiful.

    The summner squash blossom begs to be done in lace, don’t you think? And I’ll bet you could come up with a pattern that looks like the strawberry seeds too, couldn’t you!

  15. One creative gal in the lace club used acid-green beads in the strawberry motifs on her last shawl, and boy! – it looks JUST like your closeup shots of those berries. The garden looks fantastic this year already.

  16. I know you are crazy busy but any chance the pattern for “David’s sweater” is coming this summer?? Oh how I love that Morning Glory stole…so gorgeous.

  17. I’m so jealous of your strawberries! An evil chipmunk got all of the first berries in our garden. We’re working on round #2 (same plants.) He’s eaten half of those so far.

  19. Wow, I don’t usually go for wraps in such a neutral color but the Morning Glory is truly beautiful!

    I can’t believe that we’re both in zone 5 (though mine is “A” and yours is “B”). My garden is envious of your garden. Squash? Already? Amazing.

    Once you start growing garlic you will want to enlarge your garden again so you can grow more! My asparagus bed is so weedy I’m going to till it up in the fall and turn it into garlic. Much more satisfying.

  21. Wow — the Morning Glory wrap is a knockout in a cream-colored yarn! I can now see the flowers. I have the pattern in my files, and now you’ve inspired me to knit it in a natural wool or wool/silk. Nice!

  22. Love those blushing strawberries! And even more, the zucchini blossoms. Mine are only just barely germinated — I should have done what you did and get some starts. Hmmmm, I wonder if it’s too late. And then again, where the heck would I put them???

  23. I immediatly started humming The Temptations when I read the title to this post. Please say that’s what you were going for! 🙂 (PS: you SO need a new sweater project!)

  24. Lovely knitting! Love all the wraps/shawls — gorgeous colors, design, everything.
    And the garden — so neat and tidy looking. Are you going to batter and fry your squash blossoms? What a treat that would be.

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